Sunday, February 19, 2012

i miss you, cutie pie.

you loosely wrap your arms around me, kissing the side of my face, watching to see if the don't walk turns to why don't you go ahead. it does its thing and you grab my hand. we walk fast against traffic. against real life. our tattoos look stupid together. camouflage against an urban sub urban backdrop. uptown. i am going away from work, but into the building because with you, a date happens anytime, anywhere. i get excited for the lazy thursday afternoon drinking watered down booze and figuring out the crossword while those around us puzzle over rampant hand holding and molten gazing. we aren't solving anything and turn our attention to the cribbage board instead.

you get up to go to the bathroom. i admire the way your t shirt creeps above your waistband. i smile at you and blush. you catch me every time. i sit alone thinking of the salty perfection of that spot right next to your left eye. i love to kiss you there.

you come back, kiss me on the cheek. read my mind. i pluck at the beaded bracelet you bought me some other time. i do not have to pee, but i want to run a hand through my hair. squeal with a coworker about how great you are. feel you watching my butt as i walk away. i want to miss you, even for a few minutes.

so i hop off my stool, clumsy and awkward. sex and beauty giving way to tangled limbs and the drink i almost drop on your lap. you laugh and stroke my earlobe.

i back away, grinning. turning, clasping my hands behind my back, blocking the perfect curve of my ass. you love it, you sigh as i jan brady walk toward the bathroom.

i look in the mirror. i want one more sip, one more drink, one more hand. and then i want to go home. with you. i want to sit and talk and fall asleep with you playing with my hair, telling me a story about real life.

mostly though, i just wish you were fucking real.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

you are the reason i am trying to leave

i work in a bar. duh.
i work in a dive bar. uh huh.
i work in a dive bar full of regulars. sure. great. get to the point.

for the most part, this is great. it is nice to walk into work and see a bunch of familiar faces. or to be super busy and to look up and notice that your next table is not only someone you love to wait on, but someone who will love you back, monetarily.

and then, there is you.

we call you and your boyfriend that 'couple of stupid fuckers' because that is what you are to us.

you, with your stuck up pig face that we only have the privilege of studying from afar as you will not ever bother to actually look at us when you order us around, will eat your weight in cheese and drink your weight in beer and bore neat little holes in the back of my skull with your beady little pig eyes if you have to sit for even a minute without something to shove in your face.

and your dumbass boyfriend is no better. i guess i would be pissed, too if my girlfriend  looked like a barn animal, but does that mean he has to yell his order? am i deaf? is he deaf? and why does it take him so long to choose a beer? our selection hasn't changed since bush inauguration number one. how hard is it to choose between a bottle or tap of rocky mountain piss water?

so, when they finally order,i slam over to the well to pick up their drinks. the bartender laughs, knowing that is my turn to wait on them, the them, one of the many thems that frequent every bar since the beginning of bar time.

eventually they leave, taking with them a sliver of my patience, while the fish hook to a different place tugs at me with a little more insistence than usual.

why do i let this get to me? because i am really good at my job. i am a great server slinging two for ones and grease at people who wish i was either ugly or naked, if they do not know me well enough to know me at all. i won't miss my regulars because they will still be here when i get done with work, instead of being here with me,and being my work.

and the thems? the stupid fuckers? well, while i am still here, i will be dedicating a bit of my time to finding out where they work so i can repay them for the shitty attitude and paltry tip. you may not know who you are now, but soon enough, you will.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Fiction, For Now

i had a dream once, about a million years ago that i was sleeping beneath a tree, leaned up against some nameless faceless who warmed me while lazily reading from some obscure sci fi action thriller. no wonder i nodded off.

when i came to, i realized that i was covered in daisy chains that he had constructed after abandoning his book to the grass.

i looked out into water that magically appeared in front of us and asked him what he was doing.

he said, my fallen angel, i am tying you to the earth.

with dreams like these, who can ever count on reality to be as good, as frothy, as dripping with liquid gold?  How can i daydream lightly about swirling around on a dance floor to the song 33 on my wedding day and shrug nonchalantly any time anyone ever asks me about love?

i have 5 tattoos. all reminders of the greatest love stories that i have ever been told. not one of them is my own.

i am not writing this because i am frustrated. more because i am tired of caring about seeming cooler than all of the other girls because i am just one of the guys.

i am not just one of the guys. i wear makeup and skirts and have swishy hair. but i am not afraid to get dirty or eat a chili dog or try to learn how to hang glide. i do not think these characteristics particularly make me manly, they just make me, me.

the lights are bright for now. by the time i step into the vehicle, the light will have faded into nervously lit embers and the magic of another chance to say more than a bunch of words.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

and now we play the dating game. yay. phase 1

i very recently lifted my head from my books for long enough to realize that it would be kind of fun to meet someone.  i have been casually and sort of listlessly dating around the neighborhood for the last two years or so, having fun and not quite needing for anything to really stick. in popping my head up, i realized that uptown is tiny and i keep seeing the same faces, day in and day out, which is fine as they are nice faces, just not the ones i want to be waking up to, if you know what i mean.

so, i did it. i took the plunge and put a profile out on a dating site and was not disappointed by the amount of attention a girl can get who is in her twenties, sans divorce or dripping with the need to trot down the aisle and then straight to the delivery room anytime in the near future.  that coupled with the fact that i do not have any stalky exes or a sinful past makes me a good candidate for just about anyone.  Being creative and not too hard on the eyes is icing on the cake, i guess.

so, i was excited.  wow, i was about to chat with and possibly meet a whole bunch of new people! I was going to be able to check them out and see what they were sort of like and establish that they could maybe like me to. it sounded like a breeze to me and i only wondered why more people were not doing the same.

oh holy hell, was i wrong.

after posting my profile and cruising my match selection and 'favoriting' the ones i wanted to message when i got a free minute, i shut my computer off and promptly forgot all about it for about a week because as luck would have it, i met someone to date in person,briefly anyway.

when that guy, well will call smismathew, turned out to have a girlfriend, i literally said fuck this and pulled up my account, thinking maybe there would be a few nice messages for me.

and there were, if by a few you mean 87 and you add it to the other 62 gross ones.  in three days my profile had been viewed over three hundred times!

i was in shock. i was overwhelmed, and i was excited.

first, because yes, i feel that you MUST be attracted to someone before you can date them, i nixed all of the messages from people who were not really my type and then went through and scanned the messages of those who were left, deleting all of the ones that said stupid shit like 'hey gurl, what up?' or 'dam r u sexy' and then i looked at photos of those remaining and weeded out anyone with a picture of themselves topless in the mirror.

i ended up with 18 possible matches.

that night, by the time i had read those 18 exhaustive profiles, i was too tired to write anyone about anything.

and that was phase one of my experience in online dating.